


melting wax and loosened strings

by ephemeros



Series: how do i know [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Apollo and Hyacinthus - Freeform, Hostage Situation, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Mentions of Fights, Mentions of Murder, Mentions of choking, Profanity, Selkies, Unhappy Ending, alexander is a selkie john finds his coat that is all, attempted symbolism, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-17
Updated: 2017-07-17
Packaged: 2018-12-03 08:27:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11528424
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ephemeros/pseuds/ephemeros
Summary: There is a seal coat in John Laurens's attic.





	melting wax and loosened strings

**Author's Note:**

> title from a poem on icarus by erasmus darwin.
> 
> hi! so this is my first time posting on this site and i'm still a little bit nervous about this so-
> 
> uh, here's some stuff before you read: yes, i have posted this on the Hamilton Amino (under a different name), so you may have already read it.
> 
> no, this isn't edited. please tell me if you find any errors and you will have my eternal gratitude. do i intend to post an edited version of this? yes. will i ever get around to doing that? i'm not sure, so you'll most likely have to deal with this for a while.
> 
> anyway, on with the story.

There’s a memory pulling at the edges of John Laurens’s mind. He can’t quite recall it perfectly, definitely not to scale, because the memory is from several years back and it remains quite fuzzy. He remembers a quip, something carelessly tossed back then, almost eerily foreshadowing the events to come. He remembers Lafayette, his college roommate, sprawled out across the foot of his bed, chewing on some odd Japanese snack.

(“Screw you, John Laurens!” Lafayette says, nearly choking on a mouthful of — whatever it is that he’s eating. “I bare my soul to you and this is all I get in return?”

“What’m I supposed to do?” John retorts, but it has no real heat behind it. He grins, reaches over Lafayette’s shoulder and takes a snack.

“I don't know, offer me closure or something?” Lafayette suggests. “You should tell me your deepest, darkest secret as well so that I have something on you too.”

“Ha!” John grins. Lafayette flicks a film wrapper at him. “You already know everything there is to know about me, anyway. What am I supposed to tell you?”

“Ah, but everyone must have a skeleton in their closet.” Lafayette tilts his head, a silent question of whether he got the expression right, and he visibly exhales when John nods encouragingly. “I told you mine, now you tell me yours.”

“The only thing in my closet, Lafayette,” John snickers, tossing the crumpled wrapper back at him, “is _me_.”)

Three years later, John Laurens is in his second year of college, doing a field study up north, and wondering what would have happened if he had listened to Lafayette back then, about skeletons in the closet and all that instead of brushing it off.

But he didn’t, and now he does not know how to deal with his problems. John Laurens doesn't just have a skeleton in his closet; he has a coat in his attic.

It’s stuffed haphazardly into a hotel dry-cleaning bag, and then into a cardboard box. That cardboard box is inside an old storage box John probably got from his family; it has flowers all over it, mostly pink carnations and some flower he can’t identify, something with soft coral-coloured petals and glossy leaves, its petals so big they almost completely cover the leaves. There are hyacinths too, blue and purple against a blanket of green leaves, cool colours splattered together against the harsh pinks.

(There are more things John remembers, too, when he sees the box. A story about a boy who charmed the sun and the west wind. When the west wind found out the boy loved the sun more, he blew the boy’s discus off course, killing him. The sun was grieved greatly by the boy’s death. In his sorrow, he stole the boy’s soul from death and transformed him into a flower, staining its petals with his tears.

 _In the end, none of them ended up happy_ , John’s mother whispers as she closes the book.

 _None of them?_ John questions, and she shakes her head. _No, because he was a mortal and they were gods. They were not the same, why bother pretending they were? One of them was destined to leave eventually. Even if the boy had lived, there was no way the story could have ended happily._ )

That box, he remembers, is locked in a closet about three times its size, stuffed at the very back behind moth-eaten winter coats and shoeboxes that have seen better days. There is no light in the closet either; John has to feel his way around find the said box at night.

..Nevertheless, there is a coat in the attic. It’s probably covered in dust bunnies bigger than John’s plans for the future and the sort of weird scent that comes from old mothballs, but as John remembers it, it’s beautiful.

It is the same brown as a sparrow’s wing, speckled with cream spots and having an almost supernatural softness to it. It rather stinks, too, smells of salt and rotten seaweed which hasn't quite dried properly in the sun. Despite its softness, too, the fur is matted, stuck together in awkward clumps held together by salt water, and when John lifts it grains of sand fall to the floor and scatter. He never takes it out, though, only once or twice on special occasions; purely for one reason.

There is a seal coat in the attic and it doesn’t belong to him.

 

* * *

 

 

John remembers the day he got the coat; it was a hot day in July, the harsh sun bearing down upon the beachfront a few blocks from John’s house.

The beachgoers that cluttered the shore on an almost daily basis were absent, their umbrellas folded and tucked away who knows where. The day was too hot, too hot to even go to the beach. So said the weatherman, dressed in a freshly pressed, impeccable suit, from his office in the station, air-conditioned to be the opposite of the sweltering heat outside. John went anyway, crossed the beach, in the ocean just up to his ankles. He had walked the length of the public beach, and now all he had to show for it was a nice sunburn.

He had mistaken it for a dying animal, at first, ran over to it and picked it up and hauled it back into the sea. When it didn’t begin swimming, John had wandered closer, almost wearily, only to laugh when he found out he had thrown a dead weight into the ocean. He hadn’t been sure what possessed him to take it back, but something had, something had whispered to him that he would have regretted it if he didn’t take it.

So he stuffed it into his beach bag, which was actually just a rather oversized backpack, and made the short walk home.

 

* * *

 

 

Alexander showed up three days later. Veins blue and prominent in his arm, hair wet and braided messily with seaweed, eyes looking bloodshot and sleep-deprived. John was not impressed back then; he’d invited Alexander in for lunch, anyway.

“I know you have my coat.” said the other, over lunch, almost casually.

 _Oh_ , John thought, _that’s why he came_.

Maybe he should have offered it back, maybe he should have said something else. Returned the coat to Alexander, said he’d be just a moment. However, John had grinned a little, and he had asked, “Yeah. What about it?”

Alexander’s shoulders had slumped, but then he straightened up, a determined look on his face. “..Nothing.”

(Later, as he browses the internet for stories about people who own animal skins and then move in with you (unofficially) after the skin is taken, he finds out that Alexander couldn’t have pressed beyond the first remark about the coat. Selkies couldn’t demand their coats back; they were either given back or stolen back.)

The fact that he may have a _selkie_ in his house induces a sort of thrill through John that night — he takes the coat, backpack and all, and he climbs the stairway to the attic, which he barely even uses, and dumps the backpack in a corner, behind a dusty shoerack. Alexander won’t find it there, if Alexander is even a selkie.

(John looks up at the ceiling, later that night, and wonders whether selkies are real or if he’s just being a Class A Asshole.)

 

* * *

 

 

The pelt is  _heavy_ , John thinks, the next morning, as he walks from his car to the marine research facility, where he’s doing a semester in the field for college. He shifts the backpack straps across his shoulders, hoping to ease the weight into evening out. No such luck befalls him — the weight shifts onto his right side, and then suddenly there is no weight at all. John turns around to find the pelt in a pile on the floor, one of the straps on his bag broken.

John groans and kneels down next to it, setting his backpack down beside it.

Then he proceeds to spend a good eight minutes attempting to shove the entire thing back in. When he gets the whole thing in, one of the flippers of the animal awkwardly pressed across the top, he closes the good strap and leaves the other one dangling. Then John picks it up again and continues on his way.

The door to the lab is unlocked and John only hesitates for a few seconds before pushing it open. He makes his way past cupboards filled with apparatuses, sterile white tables fitted with microscopes. Passes the small aquarium they keep in the room, makes a beeline for one of the scientists in flowing lab gowns.

“So.” John announces, drawing up a chair next to the other. A woman a few rows to the right gives him a dirty look — presumably for the volume of his voice, but perhaps also for the squealing of the chair legs? — but the man beside him, the one he wants to talk to, barely even spares him a glance.

John plops down in the seat, eyeing the mess of lab samples strewn across the scientist's table.

“Good afternoon to you too, Mr. Laurens,” Dr. Benjamin Tallmadge says, not lifting his eyes from the microscope. John notices a glasses case placed on the other side of the table, above one of the seaweed samples.

“Ben–” John begins, pulling his bag onto his lap. “I need help with something.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Laurens.” Tallmadge repeats, stressing the greeting.

“Fine, good afternoon, whatever, all that,” John rolls his eyes. “I need a favour.”

“What kind of favour?” Tallmadge eyes him suspiciously. John supposes he deserves it. It's not every day that one of the students waltzes in and asks a scientist for a favour.

“Hypothetically, if I found an animal skin on the beach, could you look at it and tell me what animal it is?” John asks, all in one rush, trying to get it out. He has to resist the urge to clap his hand over his mouth after. Now it's out. Now someone else knows.

“And..” Tallmadge raises an eyebrow. “Hypothetically you brought the animal skin here in a backpack for me to look at?”

“Exactly.” John agrees, a wide smile spreading across his features. “Um, hypothetically of course.”

“Then I'd hypothetically tell you that I'm not good with identifying marine animals.” Tallmadge replies. “I took up a few classes, of course, but my major was in plants.”

“..Oh.” John says, looking slightly downcast. “Could you maybe look at it anyway?”

“What happened to hypothetical?” Tallmadge teases, turning around to face John. As he looks at the other, John is reminded of exactly how capable Tallmadge is.

Benjamin Tallmadge, born early in the year the same year as him, had always been uncannily smart, one of the legends at John's college. He could tell that you were lying by the way you stood and had an almost photographic memory.

And yet he's only an inch or two different from John's height.

John scans his face with an artist's eye: Benjamin looks old. Far older than he is. Tiredness, dark eye bags around his eyes, gives the illusion of weariness through the years. His eyes are clever, in the "I know something you don't" sort of way.

(More than likely, he does.)

John realises he has forgotten to answer and quickly amends it by saying, “It's not hypothetical any more.”

Ben gives him a small smile. “Come on, you'd better give me that in the bathroom. Everybody here'll probably want a piece of that.”

John's eyes widen frantically. “No! I can't have it ripped or destroyed or anything.”

“Oh, are you borrowing it from a friend?” Ben sounds genuinely surprised.

“Something like that, yes.” John readily agrees. He would really rather not have to explain the whole Alexander situation.

“I wasn't aware you had any friends,” Ben comments casually, picking up a small book full of samples from the table.

“What's that supposed to mean?” John demands.

“–here. Aren't you just here for like studying or something?” Ben finishes. “Come on, let's go.”

“Oh.” the other says as he reaches down to pick up his backpack. “I am, yeah. Just— uh, someone I met, I guess.”

“Someone you met?” Ben repeats, slowly. “They could be an illegal skin poacher. Your skin could be something they killed..”

“No! No— he isn't like that!” John cuts in, his eyes wide and panicked. “He's definitely not a skin poacher.”

“How are you sure?” Ben questions, holding the door of the laboratory open for John, who mumbles his thanks as he steps through. “You seem awfully quick to defend him.”

“Uh—” It's not like John can say “I think he's not human”, so he goes for, “—No blood stains?”

“Wow.” Ben drags out the ‘o’, sweeping his hands out to an imaginary audience. “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the twenty-first century, where cleaning services don't exist.”

“Just—he's not a skin poacher. Anyway. We're here.” John pushes the male restroom door open, to be greeted with the same white paneling and flooring that covers the rest of the building — hallways, entryway, laboratories, classrooms. “You guys sure do like colour around here.”

“Colourful people, that's us,” Ben remarks dryly, following him in. He turns to the door and with a quick ‘click’ the lock is shut.

“Alright, so..” John hesitates, fingering the remaining strap of his backpack. (Is there still time to back out? He hopes so.)

“Laurens, I know what we're here for.” Ben deadpans. “Bring it out.”

“Okay, okay—” John sets the bag on the ground and removes the remaining strap, pulling out the pelt. Even now, it doesn't cease to amaze him. The pattern, the softness, the way the light reflects off the fur.

He holds on to it for a while, almost doesn't want to give it to Ben. John reluctantly passes it to the other, who takes it without question.

He watches as Ben holds it to the light, twisting and turning it every which way, watching the way it practically glows in the light.

“Well, I'm not sure why you needed me to look at this,” Ben says, after what feels like the longest two minutes of John's life. “It seems pretty obvious to me what it is.”

“I'm only a student, Ben, cut me some slack,” John attempts to joke, but it falls flat.

“Seriously, John.” Ben eyes him sideways, still holding up the coat. “Of course, I'm not exactly sure which exact species, maybe you'll have to ask someone else for that, but—”

Benjamin cuts himself abruptly, letting out a small laugh, a response to a joke only he finds funny. “This is definitely a seal pelt, John.”

And in that moment, John feels his world stop spinning. Or maybe it has begun spinning — spinning too fast?

Either way, the next few moments are a blur. He thanks the other profusely, all but snatching the coat from them. He exits the door in a rush, the coat — the _sealskin_ , he thinks — stuffed haphazardly into the backpack. Can't wait to get _out_ of that place.

On his way out, as he fumbles for his ID card, his mind strays. John thinks of the sealskin in his closet, the person — the _selkie_ —, Alexander, in his house. He thinks of everything that could go wrong as he steps out of the facility.

And then, unknowingly, he takes the first step into _making_ everything go wrong.

 

* * *

 

 

So there's a coat in his attic, and a selkie in his house, and John isn't quite sure what comes next.

Alexander makes excellent company – he is a good conversationalist and intelligent, far more than someone who isn't even human should be. He isn't lazy, either: John often finds himself awoken at night by the sound of someone typing at a furious pace, the keyboard of his computer clicking, its power supply whirring loudly.

(John asks him about it, one night. He doesn't get any answer past the cryptic “I have so much to say,” – but he thinks that maybe he understands. It's not like there's an Internet connection under the sea.)

The house isn't quiet, not anymore. Silent mornings John used to spend curled up in bed (probably FaceTiming someone) are now filled with conversation and laughter and Alexander Hamilton.

Alexander never once brings up the selkie thing — John tries, once, but Alexander shoots him down quickly with an “I don't want to talk about it.” John doesn't ask him anymore, doesn't want to cross any more lines that he probably has already.

They continue on like that; a coat in John's attic, skirting around the elephant in the room, continuing to Not Talk About It. John pretends Alexander is normal, pretends he is human.

He pretends he can have this, whatever this is.

(Maybe if he pretends hard enough, it'll become real.)

 

* * *

 

 

Alexander has been with him for almost three months now. John has gotten used to living with someone, gotten used to having someone around. When he wakes up, his first thought is Alexander.

As much good as that is, it scares him. One day he knows he'll wake up without the other and — John feels lightheaded just thinking about it — what will he do then?

John thinks of it, and then of the coat in the attic. _Isn't he just delaying the inevitable?_

That Wednesday, they go out to the beach. It's a day not unlike the day John found the coat: sunny, far too hot to go out. John's air conditioning is broken, though, so it's far too hot to stay on as well.

John is the one who suggests the idea and Alexander responds positively, but with some degree of reluctance. John questions it; asks himself why a selkie would want to stay away from the ocean. He doesn't voice his thoughts.

The breeze over the sea is biting and salty — a scent unique to the sea. It brightens his eyes, wakes him up finally. There is nothing like the scent of the sea.

There is nothing like a sea breeze, either. The wind ruffles his hair, blowing a few strands from his loose ponytail. Cold air brushes his cheek and John idly wonders where the heat forecast has gone.

It's as cool a day as any — or maybe it's just him thinking. _It's him, Alexander and the ocean, in their own little pocket of the universe, somewhere hidden away from everywhere else._

Alexander runs ahead, straight to the ocean he had been so desperate to avoid earlier. John trails behind, dragging out his steps, sand in between his toes (he has long since ditched his slippers) as he walks down the beach.

There is no noise there; there is no noise needed. The only sounds are the occasional squawking of gulls as they cut across the sky and the crash of the waves on the beach. There's a rhythm, a beat, a pattern to it: something neither John nor any other human could possibly comprehend.

(He thinks this might be one of the secrets of the universe. One of impossible, unanswerable questions it taunts you with. It could be, very well, because Alexander is a mystery himself. Seal to man, man to seal, and everything in between.)

For the first time, John looks out at Alexander, ankle-deep in the sea, melancholy eyes looking out to a point he cannot see, lips curled up in a faint smile, and he thinks he understands.

Alexander is not human, he never _will be_ human. Even if John pretends, even if he tries to forget, Alexander will always be one of the children of the sea, will always yearn to return to where he belongs.

_It's only John who's stopping him._

He looks at Alexander, knee-deep in the sea now, seaweed curling around his ankle-bones, wind tousling his hair. His eyes are closed now, but John can remember the passion and determination behind him, knows those eyes like his own.

He would know those eyes any time he saw them, even in death, at the end of the world. The brimming energy in them, the fierceness behind them, is unmatched.

John thinks of Alexander, thinks of the man who came in with the tide. Who stayed because John made him stay. Who doesn't _belong_ on land; _isn't_ a human.

Who remains on land because of him. Guilt washes over John in heavy waves, rough as the ones crashing over the shoreline now. John stops a few meters away from the ocean — next to one of the larger tide pools.

He thinks, and then he remembers — _there is a coat in his attic_.

There is a coat in his attic, a selkie in his house, and a choice to be made.

 

* * *

 

 

When John gets home that day, he messes around for a little bit on Tumblr, trying to ease his mind and distract it from his nerves. When Alexander retires to his room, around ten or eleven, John bids him good night, still sprawled out on the couch in the same position, his arm bent at an awkward angle around his phone.

It’s only after he hears a door close that he gets up and walks to his bedroom. He makes sure the door is locked before he pulls down the ladder to the attic, climbing up slowly in an effort not to make a noise. John hates this; hates that he has to sneak around in his own home. He pushes himself up off the last rung and sits on the floor of the attic.

He knows this place like the back of his hand; childhood summers spent here playing hide and seek with his siblings and hiding in the old armoire all come rushing back to him in that instant. Muscle memory lets him avoid the floorboards which creak and avoid spots where Henry Junior discovered spiders. Leads him back to the wardrobe, shoved against the wall. John pulls the keys off an ornate coat hanger on the side. The lock clicks, once, twice, as he turns the key, and then opens.

Immediately, the unmistakeable odour of mothballs hits him. John wrinkles his nose as he steps into the closet, fanning away the stench with one hand and pushing away old coats with the other until he comes to the back of the closet. He drags out the old flower-print box, pulls it onto his lap and stares at it. The once-gentle pink of the petals stares at him almost mockingly.

He opens the box, pulls the dry-cleaning bag out of the cardboard box inside and shoves it off his lap, replacing it with the dry cleaning bag. John almost hesitates, but then he remembers that Alex is two floors down, it’s fine, so he loosens the straps and pulls the coat out. The musk of seaweed hits him stronger than the mothballs, the scent of the sea coming out and choking his senses. John shakes it out fully — more sand falls out. He wonders if maybe the whole ocean is kept inside this pelt. John wouldn’t put it past the truth.

The coat is as beautiful as the day he found it, he thinks. The brown is still as clear as ever, cream spots splattered across the fur like paint smattered from his brush. It’s still soft to the touch, but it’s a little harder now, slowly drying out, John thinks. If the sea is in this, then it’s slowly fading. He holds it up to his eye level, thinks of Alexander with this around his shoulders, standing in front of the sea.

It stings when John realises he can picture it much better than he can picture the selkie on land. It stings some more when John thinks, what if I’m only delaying the inevitable? What if he finds the coat eventually and I wake up and —

he’s _gone?_

The story his mother told him as a child comes rushing back to him. The sun, the wind, and the boy who came between them. They weren’t the same. He was mortal, they were gods. One was doomed to leave eventually. And leave he did, because _he was never meant to stay_.

_There was no way for it to end happily, even if he had lived._

Alexander and John; John and Alexander. John fits their names together, two pieces of a puzzle, two parts of a whole. You can’t have a puzzle with two pieces, what’s the point of that? The whole thing is solved before you even begin. John’s edges bump at Alexander’s, hoping and trying to connect as puzzle pieces do, but never really finding a way without distorting one beyond compare.

 _There’s a whole ocean between them_ , John reflects, _both figuratively and literally_. _Maybe in some other time, they were happy, no extenuating circumstances pushed upon them. But this is now; John is a human, Alexander is a selkie. They weren’t the same, and they’d never be the same. Why bother pretending?_

He scolds himself, once, twice, a thousand times, for getting caught up in something he can’t handle. They have no effect, though, don’t lessen the dread in the pit of his stomach. Before, the choice seemed so far away, so distant in the future that he didn’t have to worry himself with it. Now, with the coat stretched across his lap, the fateful decision seems imminent.

John hesitates then, weighing pros and cons. Making a choice, he thinks, is like toppling the first domino of hundreds, being the crucial push in a chain reaction. That’s what choices are, in their purest form; catalysts of change. Every choice someone makes affects a hundred other things, big or small. It’s their own little way to control the universe, to make a dent in history.

And even if our choices don’t make a dent in the world’s history, they shape our own history. They build our character, they build our history. They decide whether to paint us as a hero or villain, good or evil, protagonist or antagonist.

Right now, John feels more like the antagonist.

John holds the coat up in hands, watching the light bounce off the silky fur. He muffles his face in it. There is a choice to be made, right now, but John doesn’t want to think. It’s one of the moments where there’s an overwhelming sense of dread building in his stomach and he wants nothing more but to curl up in his bed and hide under a mountain of blankets.

There is a good choice, and one that isn’t. John knows which choice is the good one, what he should do. He knows which choice he should make, he knows what he should do. His conscience screams at him: give it back, it’s not yours! But he hangs on to it, thinking, thinking of some good way for both of them to be happy. Nothing surfaces, nothing at all.

_You can’t have everything, John Laurens._

John buries his face into the fur once more, but it offers him no comfort but an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Guilt bubbling in him makes him sick to his stomach and he feels bile rise in it, disgust at himself for even having to hesitate.

_For having to think about it for longer than a few seconds._

He thinks of two futures; one if he returns it, one if he doesn’t. Either way, none of them end happily. Alexander leaves; Alexander always leaves. There’s no way for this to end happily, he tells himself, stop trying.

Avoid the inevitable heartbreak, he tells himself. Avoid it, because if he gets attached, it will be harder to break away. Do the safer option; do the better option. Do the hard thing, because it’s the _right_ thing.

John closes his eyes, inhales in. Doubles over coughing when the scent of mothballs hits his nose. He looks back down at the coat. Back to the mess of boxes lying at his feet. He hugs the coat close to him, drags out a shuddering breath.

(John knows later that his choice is made. He doesn’t think about it; rather, busies his mind with other things, doesn’t let it run. Even if he tells himself the choice isn’t made, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do — well, he does know what he’s going to do. There is a coat in his attic, a selkie in his house, and an unspoken choice he has made.)

 

* * *

 

 

It’s around seven in the evening the next day when John swallows the bile threatening to climb up his throat and climbs up to the attic. He closes his eyes when he enters, breathes in the musky scent of dust. The coat is where he left it, no longer in the closet, but spread out across a table next to it. John opens his eyes, exhales and picks up the coat. Slings it across his shoulders as he goes back down, mutes out his head, acts on pure impulse.

There’s blood pumping through his veins, the same kind that boils in his veins when he’s itching for a fight, and it would’ve made John crack a grin under any other circumstances. All he can feel now is the blood rushing, the wild surge of recklessness, the hide across his shoulders.

 _Damn, if that doesn’t make him feel_ alive..

When he gets down, he folds up the attic ladder and slams the door with more force than is probably necessary. John exits his room, the coat still around his shoulders. The entire length of falls to his ankles, just barely brushing the tips of his feet as he walks. To _where_ , he’s not exactly sure.

At least, he’s not sure until he enters the living room. Alexander is there, hunched over a table, scribbling at an almost furious pace on a piece of paper. He closes the door behind him as he enters. It makes a soft creak; perhaps that is what alerts the other to his presence. At any rate, Alexander turns around to greet him, but the greeting falters in the middle of what John assumes to be his name. The selkie inhales sharply, his eyes fixed on the coat on John’s back.

And that’s about the point when John’s plan (or at least, what was left of it) flies out the window, completely forgotten. His heart starts beating rapidly, or at least he thinks it does, and the room suddenly grows far too hot.

There is a question in Alexander's eyes. It could be one of any kind, really, but John thinks he knows what the question is. Alexander doesn't say it aloud, simply tilts his chin towards the hide, his eyes wide and questioning.

Slowly, quietly, John nods his head, reaching up his hands to begin undoing the knot that had been keeping the skin around his shoulders.

Alexander flinches back, and John isn't quite sure why. In a few seconds, though, he's recovered, perfectly fine, perfectly normal, no signs of the shock whatsoever. John swallows nervously as the knot comes undone in his hands, the pelt falling to the floor with an unceremonious thud. The selkie's fingers twitch, his arm beginning to reach out for the coat before he abruptly withdraws it, setting it on his lap instead. John crouches on the floor, picks the coat up and then stands.

“So,” John begins, and he's thankful when his voice doesn't crack, “I decided to give you back your coat.”

(“Well done, Captain Obvious!” says his head. “It's not like you have the coat out in front of him or anything!”

“Shut up,” John replies, because that part of his head is not being helpful.)

“Yeah.” he continues, and _fuck_ , where did his speech go? John remembers poring over a paper last night, forcing it into his memory, seeing words without ever actually reading them. Where has his speech gone, and why can he suddenly not remember the lines or verses he wrote?

John takes a deep breath, brushing back a curl from his face. It's _fine_ , he can handle this, he tells himself. He's not sure if he actually believes that, but he forces himself into the mindset anyway.

Shit. John mumbles a curse as he plays with a section of the fur, refusing to meet Alexander's eyes. He swallows almost audibly, and then continues, albeit weakly — “I—I didn't think it'd be right for you to stay here while you felt like you didn't have a choice.”

Nowhere near as grand as his old speech — nowhere near as grand as Alexander can make it seem, poetry flowing from his pen with every stroke. John had never been as good with words as Alexander had and there was probably some irony that was in that. A selkie, more literate than a human.

( _But he's Alexander_ , John's brain interrupts, _he's Alexander and he's different_.)

Nowhere near as grand as anything he wanted to say, but it's enough. It's all he wanted to say, done in a few words. John can't think of anything else to say, nothing but a jumble of ‘please don't leave’ playing in his head. He doesn't say it, purely because he has some pride left and he would really rather keep it.

Nothing left to say. It dawns on John that he's still holding the coat, gripping it close to him for comfort. With minimal reluctance, he steps forward, towards the couch. Offers the coat back to its owner, his head bowed in what most likely looks like defeat.

 _One, two, three, four, five_ — John makes it to twenty-seven, in the same position, arms holding out the coat for Alexander to claim, and then he looks up, confusion evident on his face, still holding the coat out. “This is yours, you should take it.”

Alexander stands up off the couch, a pillow sliding off him and onto the floor. He looks at John, studies him intently with those same remarkable eyes that John's grown used to seeing daily. Then he steps forward, two easy, inhumanly graceful steps, and takes the coat from John's hands.

John wonders if something happens now. If the sky splits open, if the lights go out, if a hurricane rips through the town. There was some buildup to returning the coat, he muses, making it seem like such an important thing that the earth would stop for a selkie's coat.

(In the stories, it did. John remembers a story about a selkie who cursed the entire island of her husband, driving them to leap off cliffs and plunge into the ocean below, surrounded by jagged rocks. Made his village's fishing boats shipwreck in mysteriously strong freak storms, the men aboard never to be seen again.

John thinks about it; tries to imagine Alexander turning on him in cold blood and killing without a single thought. It scares him, makes his knuckles white with stress from gripping so tightly against his shirt, when he realises that's it's actually not too hard to imagine it.)

The sun doesn't flicker out, the ocean doesn't send out waves, and Alexander doesn't say anything, turning over the coat in his hands. The world is nothing then; it's just him and Alexander and the coat, in their own little bubble, far away from the demands of the real world.

“You know, you're very different from other people, Mister Laurens.” Alexander says eventually.

John's heart leaps into his throat, pounding furiously with an unsteady _ba-dum_ , _ba-dum_ , _ba-dum_ , skipping beats. Can Alexander hear his heart beating? He hopes not, but it feels so loud, like it could swallow him whole.

_What is that supposed to mean?_

John furrows his brow, visibly confused. Alexander smiles like a cat with cream, toying with the coat in his hands, running them through the fur. He asks, “How so?”, his lips curving around every syllable, just barely revealing a southern accent.

Alexander shrugs at this, though the smug smile never quite leaves his face. He repeats himself. “You're different.”

John is about to ask him to elaborate some more, because repeating the sentiment doesn't really explain it. _Different from whom? Different why?_

But then Alexander cuts in, continuing. “Other people wouldn't return the skin just because taking it was wrong. You, well, you did. Not many people are like you, John.”

Alexander fixes him with a funny look, tilts his head as if trying to figure John out. John looks back at him, cheeks vaguely red from the praise he just received, and then he realises what is happening a few seconds too late.

The wall is cold behind him, white paint on what John thinks is concrete but is not actually sure. Neither he nor any of his friends are interested in architecture, so he's not exactly sure what the wall is made of. Either way, he doesn't care that much, not with what's going on right now.

There are lips on his, he's pressed up against the wall and Alexander is kissing him. John's not sure how to react to this development, not sure exactly what this means — for both of them. He lays there, sort of like a limp fish, for a few seconds, his eyes wide open in shock.

And then Alexander is pulling back and apologising, all ‘ _I overstepped_ ’, ‘ _I shouldn't have done that_ ’, ‘ _I'm sorry_ ’ coming together in one unintelligible jumble of words.

“Shh,” John says, bringing his finger to the other's lips. He feels like he's in a stupid romantic comedy right now, main character and love interest getting together in a horrible cliche, the kind he'd poke fun at with Lafayette. “It's fine.”

Alexander quiets down almost immediately, only the occasional murmur coming through, and if it were not for John's current state he would have wondered how he'd gotten Alexander to be quiet. Instead, he takes note of their height differences.

Against the wall, John is leaning a little, smaller than the other for the first time in his life. He takes his time, adjusts his position, looks back up at Alexander. Then he mumbles, low enough for Alexander to hear, not for anybody else, “Do that again.”

He does.

 

* * *

 

 

Alexander tastes like the ocean. Salt, sea breeze, summer vacations long gone — those are all Alexander. He acts like the ocean too, powerful, beautiful, _unpredictable_.

They pull away for a breath, then return with renewed vigour, almost like this is the last thing both of them will ever do. John's arms come to rest on his shoulders, pulling him closer, _closer_ until there's no space between them.

 _Alexander is an ocean_ , John thinks, and then he closes his eyes and lets himself drown in the other.

 

* * *

 

 

At some point, they move to the bed. John's still flat on his back, under the other, and later on he doesn't remember what happened that night, just glimpses and pieces of the mystery.

( “Stay?” he remembers himself beg, and damn, does he sound pathetic.

Alexander doesn't deign to give him an answer, instead continuing — doing _exactly the right thing_ , fuck—

The other groans, tilting his head up towards the selkie, the question seemingly forgotten.

There is no answer for the rest of the night. John ignores the worry flowing through him.)

 

* * *

 

 

In the morning, John wakes up to a cold bed, devoid of human (or otherwise humanoid) presence, early morning mist beginning to form on the windowsill. His hand brushes his neck as he yawns and some parts feel suspiciously soft, teeth marks barely having faded away. His face flushes bright red, memories flooding through him, Alexander --

_Hold on._

_Alexander._

A jolt of panic shoots through him, and he hurriedly swings his legs off the side of the bed. The shower is exactly as he left it yesterday, no water running. The kitchen is empty as well, and going to the guest bedroom provides no further clues.

In the living room he sees the couch, still covered in crumbs from the night before. Empty, devoid of anything else, except for a folded-up note.

John picks it up, unfolds it with shaking hands. Two words on it, in barely decipherable writing. Writing he is familiar with, although he doesn’t want to admit it to himself.

“Thank you,” he reads, aloud, and it takes all his willpower for his voice not to crack. He closes his eyes, sets the note on the table behind him. John turns around and studies the couch some more, wondering why it doesn’t resemble the couch he remembers from last night. There’s something missing, something vaguely different — _wait_.

In that instant, all of John’s fears come crashing down on him.

The seal coat is gone, and so is Alexander. The only living thing in the house is John; Alexander has left him, returned back to where he belongs. Back in the waves, back to the sea. John rushes to the window, but there is nobody there on the beach. Just — a trail of footprints leading down the sand, stopping where waves have washed them away, only a confirmation of what John hadn’t wanted to believe.

_You can’t have everything; there was no way for this to end happily, anyway._

(At least, that’s what he tells himself, later in the evening, as he shoves clothes into a battered suitcase, a ticket for the nearest flight back to Manhattan on his phone screen.)

 

* * *

 

**epilogue - seven years later**

 

John Laurens — _Doctor_ John Laurens, he reminds himself, with an incredulous little giggle, because the title hasn’t fully set in yet — hasn’t returned to this beach in seven years. Not this entire area, in fact. The house still belongs to the Laurens family, as does a section of the beach, the very section where John is standing.

The waves still crash on the shore the same way, the gulls squawking overhead a familiar sound to his ears. Nostalgia hits him too fast for him to react. John shakes his curls out of his head, putting them up in a loose ponytail. He looks out over the sea, over the horizon, to the rocks under the cliff a few miles off.

Close to the rocks, perhaps a few metres away from them, is a seal. A seal with a brown coat, faint cream speckles almost invisible in the sun, the rest of its body submerged under the water. Intelligent, dark eyes looking straight at him, as if they’re wondering what he intends to do next. John smiles, a little sadly, then turns away. Refuses to look at the animal any longer.

..There’s a memory pulling at the edges of his mind.

**Author's Note:**

> yes, the flowers on the box were chosen for a reason.
> 
> pink carnation - "i'll never forget you", hyacinth - constancy, and the mysterious flower (pink camellia) - longing.
> 
> anyway, thank you so much for reading! please leave kudos or a comment if you enjoyed it! and if you didn't, feel free to complain in the comments. :p
> 
> feel free to scream at me on tumblr! url in profile :p


End file.
